The Hidden Pleasures of Busywork

Rote tasks—mindless at-work activities such as surfing the Web or deleting the inbox—may sound a bit mind-numbing. But new research has found that people are actually happiest on the job doing unchallenging assignments.

The study, led by Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine along with colleagues at Microsoft Research, examined how employees’ mood and attention change when performing various activities at work, such as responding to email or checking Facebook.

“With rote work, you get a feeling of accomplishment, but you haven’t exerted a lot of mental activity,” says Dr. Mark. “It gives you a feeling of fulfillment, but there’s not frustration or stress.”

The researchers’ findings provide a picture of how boredom and focus change throughout the day—and what digital tasks make workers happiest.

Focus, they found, peaks in the mid-afternoon from 2 to 3 p.m. and also rises in late morning, around 11 a.m., after workers have time to gear up. (After 3, however, workplace focus drops precipitously.) Meanwhile, people are most bored early in the afternoon, soon after lunch—and not surprisingly, on Mondays.

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